How to print from anywhere in your home

How apps, printers and cloud printing can free your images

Apps and printers can use cloud printing technology to free you to print anything from all kinds of devices around your home. Here's how to print from anywhere. In association with Kodak.

From making shopping lists to streaming music to managing your eBay listings, as the saying goes, 'there's an app for that'. Some are diverting – step forward our favourite mobile games – while others help you get more done.

Some of the best apps enable you to make the most from the features of your smartphone, such as their increasingly powerful cameras. With 5Mp now fairly standard for a phone’s camera you can capture sufficient detail in your photos to make it worth printing them, as well as sharing them on Facebook and Flickr. Summer has finally arrived and with an endless choice of activities lined up, there’s every chance you’ll want to take your camera or smartphone along and capture some memories to share with friends and family.

You aren’t limited to printing smartphone photos. Kodak has printing apps for use with tablets and for laptops that allow for printing whatever you need and wherever you are. You can either print from the cloud, in which case you’ll need a Google account (something you’ll have if you use an Android tablet or phone or have a Gmail or Blogger account), or you can use Kodak Email Print or Document Print (although you will still technicall need a free Google account). These work in largely the same way, with Document Print being designed for use on an Android tablet and adding print functionality to a product type that doesn’t natively support it. All these options allow you to print to a Kodak printer on your home or office network as the app is linked to you google account – thus unleashing all the possibilities of cloud printing.

Cloud printing is an incredibly flexible option. Simply ensure your printer is set up to make use of printing this way. The latest models in Kodak’s Hero and ESP ranges are all cloud printing-ready, so you simply need to ensure the printer is plugged in and switched on or in standby mode. You can check whether your printer is enabled for cloud printing at the Kodak Support site.

If yours isn’t on the list of those already set up to use the cloud, click this link to get the Kodak printer update needed.

Google Cloud Print lets you print all manner of documents from web pages to emails, word processor and spreadsheet documents. You just need to install the Google Docs app on your tablet, laptop or smartphone. A recently added feature, print2docs, allows you to print items you want to save to your Google Docs archive – useful if you want to keep a copy of a receipt, a web page or an email attachment.

There are two versions of Google Docs – an app for Android users and a Mobile version that works through a web browser and can be used across any platform from any web-enabled device. Mac users, meanwhile, have a dedicated Cloud Printer app that enables a MacBook to print using the cloud from any installed application. It’s available from the Mac App Store. See also: Best Android Apps

Kodak users don’t need to worry about platform issues. Instead, there’s a dedicated service called Kodak Email Print, that works on both Windows or Mac as well as tablets and smartphones and that pushes documents you want to print to your All-In-One printer via your email account. It can be used to print out the notes you’ve made on your phone – shopping lists, contact lists, letters sent as attachments and so on. It can also be used to print any document stored on a laptop.

Many Kodak Hero and ESP printers are geared up to use the Email Print service already. You can check your model here: and get instructions on how to update your printer to make use of it.

The Kodak Hero 7.1 Printer is geared up to print out photos sent to it via email

Both Cloud Print and Kodak Email Print need to be able to ‘find’ your printer on a network. After the service is registered, you are able to change your printer's unique email address to something personal, whilst managing who has access to the printer. Then you are able to print from anywhere.

Kodak printers have a neat trick up their sleeves. They can automatically recognise the type of document you’ve asked it to print and work out which ink setting to use to get the best results. Plus if you have a Kodak Hero 7.1 or Kodak Hero 9.1 printer, the printer automatically recognises which of its two paper trays it should print from. Printing word, emails etc from the bottom A4 tray, keeping any photographs to be printed directly from the top 6x4in paper tray. So if you’ve reminded the kids to print their favourite pictures from a party or trip – there’s no reason not to. With quick-and-easy printing solutions available through cloud services why not trying emailing a photo to your printer and see how simple printing has become.